Sooner or later — usually at an early age — we all start asking the Big Questions: Why am I alive? Where will I go when I die? What am I supposed to do in my life? Is there another world not available to ordinary perception? Are you there, Godde? Why did this have to happen to me? If you will only — give me that puppy — let me pass this test — get that bully to leave me alone — make the trouble I’m in go away — I’ll do anything. Will you? Please?
Almost all of us were born into one faith tradition or another, but religious education is not what it used to be, and a good percentage of people are content to believe what they’ve been taught to believe without questioning it. If I follow the rules, I’ll go to a heaven with nice white fluffy clouds and wings and harps. If I’m bad I’ll fry in hell for all eternity, while devils with pitchforks laugh at my torment. Godde is a schizophrenic, a Godde of wrath and judgment on the one hand who will damn me arbitrarily if I don’t jump through all the hoops properly, a loving and merciful Father on the other hand — only somehow we’re supposed to worship Jesus too, and he’s also schizophrenic, our human Savior on the one hand and also Son of Godde and at the same time, mysteriously, Godde too. And the Holy Ghost flits around enigmatically but gets only the most occasional mention from the pulpit. Perhaps the preacher doesn’t really understand the Holy Ghost any more than you do.
But you yourself keep on wondering. If Godde is all-loving and mostly-forgiving, then what’s all this talk of frying in hell about? If I’m supposed to love Godde, why am I also supposed to fear Godde? Why does the Church constantly tell me to repent of my sins and harp on my guilt and my fallen state, when I’m just muddling along doing the best I can? If Godde is all-loving and all-powerful, then why is there evil? Is the world really going to end in a way similar to the picture given in Revelation and the Weekly World News? Who is Godde? What has Godde done? How are we to respond?
Congratulations. You’re a theologian.
Well. You’re mulling over theological questions. The simple definition of the word “theology” is “the study of Godde.” Systematic theology, as the word implies, studies Godde systematically, patiently, and thoroughly, so that nothing gets overlooked and so that every tentative conclusion hangs together consistently with every other tentative conclusion, and you don’t end up finding yourself trying to defend belief in a Sun that stops dead in the sky without destroying the Earth (Josh. 10), hares that chew their cud (Lev. 11:6), or a woman who can get pregnant at the age of 89, deliver safely, and live to the age of 127 (Gen. 17-23).
Theology is the attempt to explain one’s faith consistently — who Godde is, what Godde has done (in a nutshell: created the Universe, created humanity, redeemed humanity), and how we are to respond. Theology studies the Big Questions: Why am I alive? Why did Godde create the Universe? Did Godde really engender Godself as a human being, teach, heal, and prophesy for one year or three, and then get killed on the Cross and raised from the dead? Is the world really going to end in an apocalypse, and if so, when? What should the Church tell the person on the street is true and not true about Godde? In this sense, theology may be considered the logic (-ology) of Ultimate Reality (theos, thea, Godde).
Many years ago, I heard a witticism: “Any stigma will do to beat a dogma.” For the average person, the word “dogma” means a positive and arrogantly asserted opinion stated as if it were incontrovertible fact; synonyms for “dogmatic” include authoritarian, imperative, domineering, bigoted, intolerant, and fanatical. The word has acquired a stigma all its own.
This is unfair — although, considering some of the behavior of the imperial Roman Church through the centuries, understandable. All dogma really means is, a doctrine, tenet, or belief about what Ultimate Reality is or is not all about, or a set of such doctrines. Every time you recite one of the creeds in church, you’re reciting dogma.
John Henry Newman once remarked, “From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery.” Notice the all-important “a” in Cardinal Newman’s remark: By sentiment, he was not talking about some treacly angels-and-flowers mawkishness, but rather about a sentiment, an opinion. He was saying that if we have no dogma, no teachings, religion is nothing more than an opinion, an empty dream, a fantasy, a joke. And the joke is on us. Unless one can defend them adequately, one’s beliefs are worth little more than a dime-store greeting card.